Let's look at everything that was necessary to have a left side of the infield consisting of Luis Maza and Russell Martin

Nomar gets hurt, LaRoche gets hurt, Abreu gets hurt, Nomar gets hurt again, Ramon Martinez gets hurt, Blake Dewitt massively exceeds his projected numbers, Joe Torre randomly decides Luis Maza is better than Chin-Lung Hu

At least one of those things makes me upset.

Who starts a game at 10 AM?

Luis Maza gets the start, making it two days for me to become unhappy with that move.

As much as I preach sample size and patience, I watch the same games that all of you do and see the same things. Namely, I see Andruw Jones going up to the plate, looking completely lost and making me just hope he makes contact. Not really what you want from your prize acquisition over the summer. Even with small sample size in mind, I have to wonder if there’s anyway that he can get his offense going this year.

Andruw Jones’ problems are two fold right now. First is that he simply can not hit a breaking ball. He’s hitting only .118 against sliders , and hitting .000 against every other breaking pitch, good for a sub .100 average overall.  More distressing is that Jones isn’t really getting around on fastballs either, hitting only .212 against them and slugging .339. The only pitch that Jones is seeing remotely well is the change up where he’s hitting a still sad .235, but he’s at least slugging .412 off of them.

This gives us two big reasons why he’s struggling. He’s failing to recognize breaking pitches, and his bat has slowed down to the point where he can’t really catch up to fastballs. Sadly, the bat speed issue might be a permanent thing where Jones simply isn’t as strong as he used to be and just can’t get around on the ball. The only solution may be for him to go with a lighter bat which will take some power away from him and give the guys in the clubhouse a few laughs.

The breaking pitch thing seems like something that should be very fixable.  I don’t have the historical numbers, but I’m sure at some point in his life, Jones was able to hit a curve ball or a slider. The pitch recognition thing becomes very evident when you see that Jones hasn’t even swung at a curve ball in the upper part of the zone yet. Since his hits are almost entirely coming from straight balls in the upper part of the plate, Jones needs to be launching these pitches, not taking them for strikes. The trend isn’t as apparent against sliders, but he’s still taking a ton of them up in the zone, and the ones he’s swinging at are just getting fouled off. If Jones can’t get around on fastballs, he needs to be able recognize the pitches that he can catch up to and drive, not foul them off.

The fact that Jones has such a huge gap in his game right now actually does give me hope that something can be fixed. If he can start recognizing breaking pitches up in the zone and driving them like he should, he should be able to pull himself up to at least his 2007 numbers, and represent an improvement over Juan Pierre thanks to his glove. In the end, as long as Jones can be better than Juan Pierre, signing him wasn’t a terrible idea. His performance right now gives me hope that he can do it.

Hanley Ramirez agrees to six year, seventy million dollar extension.

Scott Kazmir signs  an up to four year extension for 39.5 million

Ryan Braun about to get extended  for seven years.

The Dodgers have four players signed to a guaranteed contract for 2009.

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On a nicer note, Brian Sabean appears to be suffering from dementia .

Okay, this time we'll really get the rally started.

So you all doubted me when I complained about Chan Ho even getting a shot at the roster. He's just the 12th pitcher, what difference does it make? Why bother getting upset about a guy who's just going to pitch garbage time.

Well Chan Ho Park is starting on Saturday! Who's whining about nothing now!

Wait, this is horrible. Anyway, Park's strike out to home run rate this year is 2.25, and has succeeded this year mainly due to his outstanding ability to pull a Homer. Until this little experiment ends make sure to thank the sample size Gods for each one of his scoreless innings.

Powered by one time phenom and ex - Dodger Edwin Jackson the Tampa Bay Rays took over 1st place.

So what if we got swept by a terrible team, let's get it back against a decent one.

Rafael Furcal's back injury has landed him on the DL, so we needed a replacement useless utility guy for Chin Lung Hu. With an organization as talent rich as the Dodgers, you'd think we'd have a good replacement on the 40 man, right?

Nope, we've got Luis Maza . Maza is a 28 year old organizational soldier who spent eight years filling out the roster in Minnesota, topping out at .308/.344/.465 between AA and AAA in 2004, and has spent the last two years doing the same thing for the Dodgers. Fortunately for him, Maza picked the right time to go on the hot streak of his life hitting .402/.465/.528 this year for the 51's. With original insurance policy Ramon Martinez DLed, the Dodgers had the choice of Maza, three day veteran Angel Chavez, and people named Rex Rundgren and Kevin Howard. Since they all have the same value, you might as well call up the guy who's on fire.

AA shortstop Ivan DeJesus could have been used as a potential call up, but it makes no sense to start burning his option years to sit on the bench and occasionally pinch run for Jeff Kent. So long as Maza is confined to that role, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this. No word yet on who is getting DFAed to make room for him.

Update>>Tony Abreu goes on the 60 day DL to make room for Maza on the 40 man.

There are some weekends where you’re glad you’re too busy to watch any baseball. This was one of them. When losing streaks happen, people tend to look for a scapegoat about what’s wrong with the team, and this is no different. Our new target: starting pitching. Outside of Hiroki Kuroda’s 3.59 ERA, no Dodger starter has an ERA under 4.40 and arguably our two best starters coming into the season have ERA’s in the high fours. Did we overestimate our pitching coming in to the season? Is it time to start looking for some help?

Not at all. The Dodgers have three of the twelve most unlucky pitchers in the NL according to FIP , which measures ERA based on a pitcher’s peripherals. Chad Billingsley checks in at number three on the list, Brad Penny at number nine, and Derek Lowe at number 12. If our pitchers were performing like the numbers say they should, the Dodger rotation would look like this:

Brad Penny – 3.86 ERA

Derek Lowe – 3.72

Chad Billingsley – 3.30

Hiroki Kuroda – 4.18

Esteban Loaiza – 4.59

Or

Chan Ho Park – 5.41

When you look at the rotation like this, things certainly look a lot better. The Dodgers should be sporting a fifth starter with an ERA under 4.60 and three starters under 3.90. I don’t think there’s any team in the league that would be unhappy with that kind of performance from their rotation.

The reason for these inflated ERAs is the team’s defense, which ranks27^th in the league in defensive efficiency. However, I don’t think this actually represents a problem. Players that we know are good defensively like James Loney, Rafael Furcal, and Andruw Jones are putting up horrible to average RZRs , an improved version of zone rating. Zone rating works by dividing the field into “zones” for each fielder, then measuring the percentage of balls in that zone that are converted into outs. The low numbers from known defensive assets tell me that the other team is being unusually good at hitting them where they ain’t and they can’t keep that up for ever. Even the most pessimistic person would say that the Dodgers an average defense and this will show up once they actually get opportunities to field the ball.

We came into this year expecting our pitching to be a big part of the team’s success. Just because some balls have happened to find gaps this year, nothings changed. Despite looking bad right now, the Dodgers starting pitching will bounce back soon, and the ability to add a James McDonald or Clayton Kershaw makes it even better.

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Old friend/most evil man who ever lived Paul DePodesta has started a blog for the Padres front office. Knowing my history with him, I’ll probably enjoy it.